


Thorns

by ProtoNeoRomantic



Series: City of David [2]
Category: Dominion (TV)
Genre: AU from Real Life as of Christmas 2016, Broken Promises, Country Music, Desperate Sex, Drinking, Drugs, Dysfunctional Family, F/M, Family, Father-Daughter Relationship, Father-Son Relationship, Flashbacks, God Forsaken, Grey's Anatomy References, Just because you're paranoid don't mean they're not after you, Long Lost/Secret Relatives, Mother-Daughter Relationship, Mother-Son Relationship, Multiples, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Third Person Limited, Paranoia, Parenthood, Partner Betrayal, Politics, Pop Culture, Pop music, Pregnancy, Present Tense, Religion, Strange Bedfellows, Their world is our world, Trust Issues, Twins, Vega's Ecconomy, comment if you have interest in seeing this continue, discussion of real life celebrities' personal lives, founding of the City of Vega, overdue sex, televangelism, uncertain parentage
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-12-03
Updated: 2019-12-03
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:27:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,869
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21656758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProtoNeoRomantic/pseuds/ProtoNeoRomantic
Summary: David has tried playing nice, but when Claire brings brash young social theorist Solomon Thorn to Vega to take his sister's place in the Senate; it is clear he also expects to take David's place as Claire's closest ally, just like his mother did with Edward twenty years earlier. Clearly, he doesn't known who he is dealing with.  And neither does Claire Riesen.
Relationships: Alex Lannon/Claire Riesen, Claire Riesen/David Whele, David Whele & William Whele, David Whele/Becca thorn's Mother
Series: City of David [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/191795





	Thorns

**Author's Note:**

> “Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?” That's what Jesus said on the cross before he died. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Job asked the question, too. But he kept the faith. And what did he get for it? Replacement children. PTSD. Was it worth it to have been a faithful servant? Or would it have been better to curse God's name from the beginning? Where was God throughout all of Job's suffering and pain? He was winning a bet with Satan. Makes you wonder where He is through all of the unfairness and inequity and cruelty in the world. Where is He now?  
> Grey's 14:10

He isn't meeting her for the first time. Not remotely. But somehow it feels that way. He sees her there. Across a crowded room, for God's sake. Standing in a spotlight that is only in his mind. And that annoying song is playing.

Well, not _that_ annoying song. _I've been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding..._ If it was _that_ song, he probably wouldn't dare. The sense of deja vu, the black-hole pull of inescapable fate, would have been crushing rather than enthralling. He'd have been trapped in the moment he had met _her_ (the one her, the real her, the true her), not free to move forward in the long shadow of that moment and make the same mistake again, knowing better.

No, not that song, but one just as bad, arousing the same mix of disdain and self-satisfaction. A dead girl with a beautiful voice, wasting her last months on Earth trying to sound like something she is better than. Crossing over. One of seven or eight billion tiny, pointless tragedies for which both vengeance and mourning have been temporarily suspended for this grand occasion.

Like everyone around her, Stephanie Thorn has traded in her muddy fatigues for gaudy evening finery liberated from the abandoned retailers, closets, and dressing rooms of the ruins of Old Sin City. Her ensemble involves both feathers and rhinestones as well as a generous showing of cleavage. Practically the dress blues of this outfit. But still, she stands out from the crowd.

She is bored. Annoyed. Agitated. Restless. Cynical. Mildly contemptuous of the rapidly-becoming-drunken revelers, though she too is drinking heavily. It is written all over her face. It speaks in the quiet movements of her never-still body. Their jubilant mood, their premature celebration of their very dubious victory, of delivering The City from the hands of inexplicably retreating angels; it all grates on her nerves almost as much as it does on David's.

It makes him feel suddenly close to her. As if they are alone here, just the two of them. The only two sane, intelligent people left on Earth. Or at least in the City of Vega. Which is a stupid name, chosen for the stupid reason that it saves on redoing signage. That and some private school crap about Latin and constellations Riesen was babbling about in the second hour of his victory speech. After almost everyone had more than half tuned him out, like David, or wandered off to find the nearest drunken celebration, like Thorn.

She sees him watching her. For a moment he is poised to panic, feeling as though he's been caught at something. But that's just his silly imagination, under the influence of anachronistic guilt from thinking about violating the social norms of a world that doesn't even exist anymore, by breaking vows that have already expired by their own terms. Even if they feel like they haven't.

She smiles and waves him over. Raising her glass and draining it, apparently in his honor, as he approaches. “God I hate this song,” he says, voicing the first thought that stumble through his own, not entirely sober, mind. So suddenly sure that they are in sync about everything, that they are a matched set somehow.

Thorn's brows draw together and now she is at least as annoyed by him as by all the victory nonsense. “I wasn't hitting on you,” he tries to clarify, making all the wrong assumptions as he will come to find that he often does with her. “I was just...” the sentence trails off. She is already responding.

“If you were that's a dumbass way to do it,” she complains, “ragging on my favorite song.” She sounds disgruntled. Disappointed? Either way, she can't be serious. Can she?

“This song?” He asks. “Really? Shake, shake, shake your hella good hair to this sick beat? The last mind-numbing top 40 hit recorded in the ten minute before the end of time? That's your favorite song?”

“Not really,” she admits, moving closer and giving his body a frank once over, already too far in the general direction of drunk to hide her sudden lust, or to want to. “Not even my favorite on the album.” She smiles broadly feeling the matchless serenity that only alcohol can bring to a devout drunk, as he already knows her to be. “My real favorite, is _Blank Space_ and now you really can't say I didn't warn you.”

David doesn't know what to say to that, so he ignores it. Or he means to. “Does that mean I can grab your ass?” he says instead. David is no more drunk than usual tonight, but he hasn't been sober for the worse part of a year.

Thorn rolls her eyes. The joke doesn't land quite right but she is in a forgiving mood. “Only if you're _finally_ going to fuck me,” she says. Then she giggles at the startled look on his face and tosses back someone else's unattended drink dramatically.

 _Finally_. It takes David a split second to catch up, then he smiles back lasciviously. She _has_ had her eye on him. He hasn't been imagining it.

Minutes later they are frantically undressing each other in one of the city's millions of abandoned hotel rooms, on a bed that at least is made up in such a way as to suggest that the sheets were clean when they were left unchanged for however many months, acquiring a mildewy aroma that penetrates the sturdy petroleum-based comforter that they have left in place like a thin ring of paper over a public toilet seat.

Their lovemaking (or okay, mainly just fucking this first time) is also frantic. A quick grope and grind and then lickit-n-stickit. Hard and fast and to the point. None of the fumblings of youth, but none of the gushing, heartfelt emotion either. They are both calmer after. They lay there a while. Not talking. Not needing to. Their most urgent need met. Finally.

It is Thorn who eventually speaks first, and in some indefinable way David feels that this is a victory. “Whenever I listen to music now,” she confesses, angry-sad, more or less picking up their conversation where they left off, “hers especially, or anybody that good; sometimes I get so blazingly pissed off. I mean what a fucking joke, all that talent, all that beauty, snuffed out by 'angels' that can't even sing.”

David squirms uncomfortably. He wants to lighten the mood. To grab hold of the sense of closeness he feels slipping away. “Well but they aren't all dead.” Statistically speaking, he figures this is probably true. But what he says next isn't. “Taylor Swift isn't even dead if that's who you're talking about.”

“Really?!” Thorn says brightly, half sitting up. The hope in her voice is so adorable. David knows better, knows on some level that what is funny to him will not be funny to her. He has been here long before Thorn. With Eleanor, with Shelly, with everyone. But he is growing enamored of his own joke, and can't help himself.

“You mean you didn't hear?” he asks, with convincing sincerity, he thinks proudly. Thorn credulously goads him to explain. “Oh yes,” he continues, totally deadpan. “She's in New Delphi now, organizing the reclaiming of abandoned sheep to provide wool socks for soldiers and orphans, or something like that.”

Thorn is buying it. Hook line and sinker. She may be a chemist and the devil knows what else, but common sense? “Wow, that's amazing. And so like her, too, so...” She is like every stereotype of a stupid smart person ever to grace the T.V. screens of Earth that Was.

David continues, pressing his luck, not sure how long he can keep a straight face. Or voice. “In fact, I hear she just got married, if you can believe the relays.”

Completely fucking serious, and so full of hope that it makes David feel just a little bit guilty, Stephanie Thorn, future Consul and Senator of Vega, replies, “Oh wow, that's great! Did you here who; I mean I'm sure it's no one we've heard of. Unless it's General Calderas. God, they would make such a great couple. And so in sync on the whole sheep thing.”

“Oh no, I remember who they said,” David continues, the very picture of innocence. “It was Jerry Lee Lewis.”

Thorn looks at him with shock, then with mild disdain and deep annoyance. “You're such an asshole, Whele,” she declares, giving him a surprisingly hard but ineffectual shove towards the edge of the bed.

David keeps up the act for one more round, just because. “Cross my heart and hope to die!” he declares, sounding both innocent and defensive now. “He said, he'd had to lower his standards some on account of the apocalypse, and everything. So... she's not _actually_ a blood relative...” David finally cracks a smile; and, grudgingly, blushing at her own gullibility, so does Thorn. “But she is less than a third of his age, so he said she'd do till something better came along.”

“You fucking asshole,” Stephanie repeats, laughing just a little now. “You know, everyone is right about you.” All in all her reaction could be much worse. He has spent the night on the couch for less.

David is grinning now, but still going with it. “As a matter of fact, Jimmy Swaggart, did the honors. Oh yes, and Elvis came out of hiding to play them up the isle.”

Stephanie is dying laughing now, but still a little angry and a little sad for Taylor all over again. She pinches him on the arm, hard. “ You are the most cold-hearted bastard in the whole City of Vega,” she declares.

“Thank you,” David says automatically. He is already thinking of something else. “But it is something when you think about it. Brother Jimmy and Cousin Jerry, made to right to the end. To be... consumed in the fires of Heaven.” With a small chuckle he adds, “Probably kicked a few eight-balls in the teeth, too, old as they were. There's something... I don't know... right about that. Don't you think?”

Thorn shrugs and yawns. “I barely know who either of those people is,” she announces, though her laughter suggested otherwise a moment ago. “That was before my time.”

David groans and rolls his eyes. “I'm only ten years older than you,” he reminds her, trying not to feel defensive. He is uncomfortably aware of his own tendency to dish out the lash of a sharp tongue better than he can take it; but in his lifelong struggle with his own delicate fucking feelings, knowing has never been close to half the battle. 

“Whatever,” says Thorn glibly, signaling that she is over the whole conversation. “Wanna see if we can find some more booze?”

David sits up, suddenly alert, remembering why he came looking for Thorn for in the first place. “No,” he says seriously, “ _I want something else._ ” Their eyes meet and he know she knows what he means. Not that discretion actually matters. There's no such thing as a controlled substance or a controlled anything anymore.

Thorn rummages among her hastily discarded clothes and comes up with a translucent, amber pharmacy bottle. “Adderall,” she declares offering it to him. “All I've got on me but there's plenty more stashed.”

“That'll do it,” David acknowledges, taking the bottle and swallowing three or four of the tiny tablets dry.

“So how was the latest monologue from our Fearless Leader?” Thorn asks, mock casually, still smiling, sweet-over-bitter, “Did I miss the answer to life, the universe, and everything?"

David Chuckles, shaking his head. “We are Zion and we are not afraid!” he summarizes the General's evening long Opus, quietly imitating the shouting voice of whatever character in The Matrix said that.

“These fool!” Thorn exhales, her words one with a deeply frustrated sigh. “you'd think they'd know too easy when they see it, from watching TV if nothing else.”

David scoffs. The sound of his almost laugh is brittle, much harsher than he intended, though still short of what the situation merits. “You're just saying that because you come from the Reality Based Community.” Thorn's small, nervous laugh and her furrowed brow, along with her lack of a verbal response, all tell him that he's done it again. Referencing something that really is before her time. Forgetting that, at thirty-eight, he actually is older than eighty or ninety present of his comrades in arms and everybody else on Earth.

“No Country for Old Men,” he mumbles aloud; not meaning to, but not really caring. Everyone here is so far beyond trying to appear normal! Thorn merely shrugs, and begins to gather up her clothing; getting the general idea of why his previous statement didn't make any sense, not needing the details. He repeats the words, rolling them around on his tongue. “No Country for Old Men.” It's the title of a movie he's never seen and doesn't know the plot of, planted in his brain by the lost art of commercial advertising. But it perfectly describes the world he now lives in.

Every day is a hard day, and has been for a year now. Every day will be a hard day, probably from now on. David can see, can feel, that the physical demands of 24-7 warfare are harder on his body than they are on the thousands of thirteen-to-thirty-year-olds who make up most of their makeshift army. One by one, the few survivors of his and his father's generations succumb to illness, injury, heat, starvation, despair.

To say he envies the dead would be a wild exaggeration. David knows that. He is fighting like Hell every day to stay alive. But he feels a little bit older every day. And a little bit more alone.

Thorn is dressed now, getting ready to leave. He grabs her arm to stop her. She turns and looks at him expectantly. He tries to think of something clever, but the pain in his eyes has already given him away, and he is too tired to pretend otherwise. “Don't go,” he says simply, earnestly.

“I need to check on my daughter,” she half answers, half lies. They both know that their respective children are sleeping, soundly if not safely thanks to Thorn's pharmacology skills, along with Riesen's daughter and a half a dozen other children of 'Vega's' dubious elite, in the heavily guarded temporary headquarters of the encampment, currently located in the Hotel/Casino formerly known as Caesar's Palace.

Becca and William are in no more danger than on any of the other nights their parents have left them alone-ish in the company of an army to stand guard duty, or to get blind drunk, or both. Thorn's sudden eagerness to leave may have a little to do with residual guilt over that, but mainly it's David, and he knows it. She can't get free of him fast enough. 

As she leaves he silently curses his miserable, needy, clingy desire to latch on to the first decent woman he can find and parlay a little over-due sex into some kind of fractured happy-ever-after. He must seem pathetic to her, David thinks, in that moment; and he feels used. Cheated. Defeated. Humiliated.

He never quite forgives her for that feeling, even though he is more-or-less aware that the slight to his ego occurred almost entirely in his own mind. Not in the years they spend together. Not in the years that follow. That feeling of being the one who wants, far more than he is wanted, is unforgivable. It is something he later swears, in the midst of their post-romantic warfare, that he will never let happen to him again. 

And yet, after all these years, now there is Claire Riesen.

Here she stands next him, her tight smile painted on; awaiting the arrival of the all-but-already-elected Senator Solomon Thorn. She is as casually cold to him as ever, far more stiff and formal than her father ever was to him, even in such a public setting. As if they are still the same frienamies they always were. As if nothing of any importance has happened between them in the past few days.

Because clearly, for her, nothing has. Her casual betrayal in the matter of the Agritowers says that much. He's got to stop thinking of her as the sweet, innocent child she used to be, David chides himself, and account for her as the devious rival and formidable potential enemy that Grownup Claire clearly is. He's tried playing nice with her, but now it is painfully clear that she will never let herself rely on him the way her father once did.

And if she doesn't believe she needs him, what is keeping him alive? Nothing but her residual distaste for violence. Considering everything he knows about her and her low opinion of his capacity for loyalty, that won't be enough for long. The time has come, David realizes, with a shockingly painful stab of regret, to reconsider whether he might be better off, whether _Vega_ might be better off, with Claire Riesen dead.

**Author's Note:**

> I still hope to finish this someday, but due to the extreme lack of popular demand, I'm going to focus on other things for a while.


End file.
